The federal rule
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, hours over 40 in a workweek are paid at one and a half times the regular rate. That is the entire federal rule. There is no federal daily overtime, no federal double time, and no federal premium for weekends or nights.
Two consequences surprise people:
- A fourteen-hour day is not automatically overtime. Work fourteen hours on Tuesday and go home early the rest of the week, finishing under 40, and federally none of it is overtime.
- Saturday and Sunday are ordinary days. A weekend shift is overtime only if it pushes the week past 40. Weekend premiums exist because employers offer them or contracts require them, not because federal law does.
States that add a daily rule
A handful of states go further. The important ones:
- California — over 8 hours in a day is time and a half; over 12 is double time; the seventh consecutive day worked in a workweek is time and a half for the first 8 hours and double time beyond.
- Alaska — over 8 hours in a day is time and a half.
- Nevada — over 8 hours in a day, for employees earning below one and a half times the minimum wage.
- Colorado — over 12 hours in a day, and over 12 consecutive hours.
Where state and federal rules differ, whichever is more favourable to the employee applies. That is why the daily states effectively add a second threshold rather than replacing the weekly one.
The trap: pyramiding
Here is where calculators — and payroll systems — get it wrong.
Take five ten-hour days in California. That is 50 hours.
- The daily rule gives 2 overtime hours each day: 10 overtime hours, leaving 40 regular.
- The weekly rule says hours over 40 are overtime. There are 50 hours total, so it is tempting to add another 10.
- Total: 20 overtime hours. This is wrong.
The correct answer is 10. The weekly threshold applies only to hours that have not already been paid as overtime. Those 10 hours were already counted daily; counting them again under the weekly rule is called pyramiding, and it is not how the rules work. After the daily rule runs, only 40 hours remain classified as regular — which is not over 40, so the weekly rule adds nothing.
The mistake is dangerous precisely because 20 looks plausible. Fifty hours, ten over forty, ten over eight per day — the numbers all feel like they should combine.
When the weekly rule does still bite
It applies whenever hours accumulate without any single day crossing the daily threshold. Six seven-hour days in California is 42 hours. No day exceeds 8, so daily overtime is zero — and the weekly rule then correctly produces 2 overtime hours.
So the two rules are not alternatives. They are applied in order: daily first, then weekly to whatever regular hours remain. The timesheet calculator does exactly that and says so underneath the result.
Double time and the seventh day
Double time is almost entirely a California phenomenon. It applies beyond 12 hours in a day, and beyond 8 hours on the seventh consecutive day worked in a workweek.
The seventh-day rule is the one people miss. Work all seven days of your workweek and the seventh is premium from the first hour — not just the hours over 8. It is also another reason the workweek boundary matters: seven consecutive calendar days spanning two workweeks does not trigger it.
What none of this covers
- Exempt employees. Overtime rules apply to non-exempt workers. Being salaried does not by itself make you exempt — that is a separate test.
- The regular rate. Overtime is 1.5× the regular rate, which is not always your hourly wage. Non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials raise it — explained here.
- Contracts and union agreements, which can be more generous than the law but never less.